Deadline for submission of project applications: August 4, 2022, CEST
Can you reimagine the future of your city through design and spatial practice?
We invite you to define the future of public space and community on the growing African continent by activating the imagined possibilities of your localised context. Building Beyond is an invitation to dream new realities into being.
Our cities are shaped by a dynamic interflow between people, politics, cultural expressions, infrastructure, economies, and dreams. More than ever, this dynamism has been felt in the African city as Africa is the planet’s fastest-growing continent - holding the youngest population and the highest urban growth rate. Many African cities are seeing a swell of new and heightened phenomena, such as increased privatisation, expanding surveillance, and escalating climate change, with simultaneously shrinking civic and public spaces.
With the growing complexities of the city, there is a greater need than ever to engage critical questioning in a variety of forms and consider how we live and what the future could hold. Designers, artists, and cultural practitioners are opening up avenues for community and care, whilst offering creative perspectives that rethink belonging, place, and space.
At the Creative Industries Fund NL and Prince Claus Fund, we believe in making space for creatives to actively challenge dominant power structures and put forward different methods for engaging with their communities. We believe in making space for a multitude of perspectives - perspectives that make you think twice, think deeper, or think differently. This programme is part of a longer conversation on how creative practices rooted in localities, community, queer theory, embodiment practices, decoloniality, and/or intersectional approaches can lead us toward different epistemologies, methodologies, and ecologies that foster transformative urban agendas.
Creatively driven critical design practices and cultural productions can reaffirm agency, restate ownership, and reimagine space. This is at the core of Building Beyond, an alternative educational structure where you can come together with your peers and postulate the future of your communities. Building Beyond invites you to engage with how your practice relates to design, public space, architecture, activism, policy, and the digital space to propose new methods for engaging with challenges relating to your city’s public space and its communities.
With Building Beyond, 12 designers, creatives, and artists are hosted over the course of a year and aim to foster thought leadership, promote criticality and solidarity, and reframe design-based practices. The programme consists of peer group sessions, masterclasses, and two mentoring intensives in the form of Lab Weeks (one in the African continent, and one in the Netherlands) where there will be opportunities for exchange and to build your network in different scenes. In addition to this, each participant receives an award of €10.000 and guidance from mentors to work on the concept for a body of work that is outlined in their application.
The organisers of Building Beyond are specifically looking for individuals with around 5 to 10 years of experience in design and/or spatial research and/or spatial practice. They are excited by experimental work that moves beyond disciplinary and thematic boundaries, and especially welcome applications that consider community needs and desires while promoting the inclusion of marginalised groups and identities.
If you are a designer, creative, artist, thinker, architect, or are working anywhere in-between, from and based in Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Tanzania, Tunisia, Chad, South Africa, or South-Sudan, you are welcome to apply to this call.
How to apply?
Applications can be completed via the
Prince Claus Awards Platform at https://princeclausfund.awardsplatform.com/
NB: Consult the Guidelines & Eligibility before applying & check out the Frequently Asked Questions for more information.
The deadline for the submission of project applications is August 4, 2022, at 23h59 CEST. Only complete application submissions to the platform before the deadline can be considered.
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